Related

Svend Robinson is usually remembered for two spectacular moments: His decision in 1988 to become the first politician in Canada to go public about his homosexuality, and his stunning career self-immolation when he stole an expensive diamond ring in 2004.

But Robinson’s quarter-century in federal politics left a far more significant legacy, as author Graeme Truelove discovered during his research leading to the publication next month of Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics.

The first authorized biography of Robinson presents the case that the Burnaby MP was the most influential non-cabinet minister among the 4,206 individuals who have sat in the House of Commons since Confederation.

Robinson’s uncanny ability to put public pressure on governments and ministers resulted in many changes to federal statutes, and his fingerprints are all over the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, according to Truelove.

Robinson’s absence from the political scene has also resulted in the New Democratic Party having far less aggressive foreign policy positions, a candid NDP deputy leader, Libby Davies, told Truelove.

Many Canadians want a party that has a “a real, critical position on foreign affairs — that wasn’t the Time magazine version ... and that’s, I fear, what we’ve come around more to now,” she said.

The author also delves into Robinson’s background, starting with a traumatic childhood dealing with a violent alcoholic father.

And the book looks into his first marriage to a young artist, his coming to terms with his sexuality while a student at the University of B.C., his public and behind-the-scenes battles with the NDP establishment in B.C. and Ottawa, his controversial participation in B.C. anti-logging protests at Lyell Island and Clayoquot Sound, his final moments with Sue Rodriquez as she died in his arms in a doctor-assisted suicide, a failed 1995 leadership bid, and his unsuccessful comeback attempt in 2006.

“Although he remains a hero to countless Canadians, that disastrous act has been given disproportionate stature, an ugly asterisk on the public memory of a giant in the fields of human rights and environmental protection,” writes Truelove, 30, a first-time author and a House of Commons employee. Truelove, while he was a University of Ottawa political science student, volunteered for Robinson.

Robinson, who has resisted offers from publishers to write his own story, agreed to cooperate with Truelove from his base in Switzerland, where he lives in relative obscurity with husband Max Riveron and works at The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

The author doesn’t hide his admiration for Robinson, yet the book includes a number of unflattering passages and comments from critics — including friends and former staffers — questioning Robinson’s judgment.

The Vancouver Sun was given exclusive access to the book.

Here are some of the key excerpts, introduced, in italics, by Sun Ottawa correspondent Peter O’Neil, who has followed Robinson’s career since 1988:

You can’t understand Robinson’s intense personality without knowing something of his troubled childhood as the son of an alcoholic American English literature professor, Wayne Robinson, who was constantly losing his job and forcing his wife Edith and their three kids from city to city in the U.S., Canada and Edith’s native Denmark.

When Wayne drank, he was a different man. The wonderful camping trips turned ugly. Svend recalls Wayne pelting him with rocks until he climbed a tree to escape. Quiet nights at home would be shattered when Wayne flew into a sudden rage. He beat Edith, threw things and once stabbed her in the arm with a fork.

When Svend tried to intervene, he’d be beaten, too. Once, at dinner, Wayne hit Svend in the face so hard that his glasses snapped and his nose was broken, giving him the slight hook in the bridge of his nose that would later be exaggerated by political cartoonists. On another occasion, Svend was hog-tied, beaten and locked in a closet.

Robinson left home at age 17 when he moved into the University of B.C. residence and began working on a science degree, hoping to become a pediatrician. He soon became involved in politics and, in the process, got his first taste of the media limelight.

When, during the 1972 federal election campaign, BCTV poked around UBC for a student radical to join a panel discussion with Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, Svend was the natural choice. The idea was to show Trudeau interacting with a student, but according to an article by Allan Fotheringham in The Vancouver Sun, Trudeau appeared “completely bollixed” by Svend’s request that Trudeau reveal the donors to the Liberal campaign.

Robinson married his high school sweetheart while at UBC but the marriage didn’t survive as he came to terms with his sexuality. Following in father Wayne’s footsteps, he also struggled with alcoholism.

Patricia was an artist, a musician and a fellow UBC student, and she and Svend had been in love since high school. Svend and Patricia were married in St. Anselm’s Anglican Church, the little chapel at UBC, in 1972 (and) took their honeymoon in a cabin by the ocean on Pender Island.

“It was bliss,” remembers Robinson.

But it wasn’t to last. Even before they were married, Svend had wondered if he might be gay.

He’d see an attractive man — a lifeguard, perhaps — and joke about it to Patricia. They’d laugh, but he wasn’t really joking. The more he tried to have that “normal” life, to force his identity into the slot the world had carved out for him, the more it hurt. Longing for an escape, he began to drink even more. Burying himself in school and volunteer work and drowning himself in alcohol worked for a while, but eventually the denial caught up to him.

Robinson, while intoxicated, had his first homosexual liaison with a student politician from another university.

He’d heard what everyone had heard about homosexuals: that they were depraved, sick, predatory. He knew he wasn’t those things. What he couldn’t fathom was how to reconcile his feelings with how society felt. Hiding his homosexuality from Patricia made him feel dishonest, but he knew how much pain it would cause her if she knew the truth. One night he drove her to a beautiful spot at UBC overlooking the ocean and told her there was something she needed to know. At first she blamed herself. They tried counselling, but their marriage was over, and in 1975 they separated. …

He felt awful about hurting Patricia, but even more powerful was Svend’s feeling that he was now a new man. At first he’d visit gay bars tentatively, using a fake name. … He even signed up to audition as a go-go dancer at a gay bar, but got cold feet, abandoning the attempt as soon as the first funky notes of “Little Green Bag” began to play.

Robinson quit drinking before winning his Burnaby seat in the 1979 election. The skinny, youthful 27-year-old was at one point not allowed into the MPs’ special entrance, as a security guard didn’t take seriously “this kid in sandals and shorts.” But once inside the House of Commons, Robinson made a strong impression within weeks of his arrival over a mini-scandal.

“Clearly, the NDP in young and slight Svend Robinson from Burnaby have a rookie who needs hardly any seasoning,” wrote Douglas Fisher in The Vancouver Sun. “He commands the floor when on his feet.”

In the 1980s, Robinson successfully badgered Pierre Trudeau’s government to change the wording of Canada’s rape law and bring regulatory changes to help prison inmates. He also successfully advocated for changes to legislation relating to young offenders and access to information, and fought to improve pensions for RCMP widows, according to Truelove.

But his most significant advocacy efforts relate to Trudeau’s 1982 Charter of Rights, the book recounts. He played a key role in successfully pushing for the inclusion of women’s rights, and for the right to trial by jury for serious offences. With colleague Ian Waddell, he also successfully filibustered against a bid to include an amendment in 1983 adding property rights — which Robinson, who feared that right would prevent government from imposing rent controls or regulate health and environmental matters, considered his greatest achievement.

Robinson’s contribution to the debate greatly affected the document, earning him high praise. “He, perhaps more than any other opposition MP, has been the architect of the Charter of Rights,” wrote Michael Valpy in The Vancouver Sun. “No MP worked harder or more effectively to improve the constitutional proposals.”

While Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and a number of his ministers were supportive of gay rights, Progressive Conservative backbenchers were merciless in using personal innuendo to attack Robinson’s bid to expand gay rights protection, referring to gay men as “fairies” and “sodomites, pederasts and proponents of bestiality.”

Most of the time, these MPs were content to hurl snide comments about hairdressers at Robinson, the suspected homosexual, as he made his speeches. (“Why aren’t you at Rock Hudson’s funeral?” PC MP Dan McKenzie shouted on the day of the gay actor’s cremation after his death from AIDS.) Other times, they went out of their way to feature fiery condemnations of homosexuality in their own speeches.

In 1988, Robinson’s Ottawa and Burnaby offices were flooded with letters — some of it grateful, many others like the one containing a bullet and a request that he use it on himself — after he publicly announced his homosexuality. He made a promise to himself that he wouldn’t be able to keep.

Young, gay Canadians from across the country wrote to Robinson, telling him that, because of him, they could envision a future without compromise. “I owe you my freedom,” wrote one. …

Being a role model meant that his behaviour was constantly being scrutinized, and that put increasing pressure on him. “I can stumble, but I can’t fall. My life has to be squeaky clean in every conceivable way,” he would later tell Maclean’s.

In 1989, Robinson convinced Captain Michelle Douglas to take part in a challenge of the Canadian military’s prohibition against gays and lesbians.

“Not one to watch from the sidelines, Robinson acted as (lead lawyer Clayton) Ruby’s assistant, an arrangement both lawyers found useful. Together, they prepared a challenge that would be devastating to the government lawyers assigned the task of defending the discriminatory policy.

It never got that far. In October 1992, just as Douglas and Ruby were about to go through the doors of the Federal Court of Canada to argue their case, they received word that the military was abandoning the policy against homosexual members. … It was a historic announcement — and one that came nearly 20 years before a similar about-face in the U.S.

In 1993, Robinson — infuriating his caucus colleagues in Ottawa and the B.C. NDP government under Mike Harcourt — was among hundreds of activists arrested for setting up anti-logging blockades at Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The following summer, after heavy pressure from media critics to prosecute him, Robinson was sentenced to a 14-day jail term at Ford Mountain Correctional Centre in Chilliwack.

On Parliament Hill, MPs are treated like aristocrats. If a member offhandedly voices a preference for chocolate milk instead of regular milk, chocolate milk is waiting at the next committee meeting, along with a plate of cookies. … On Parliament Hill, nobody ever tells a member to wash out flower pots for the greenhouse, collapse and stack cardboard boxes, or bag pop cans collected by other prisoners, but that’s what Robinson did at Ford Mountain. He lived in a unit with 54 other inmates and was treated like any other prisoner. He earned $3 a day performing the same menial tasks assigned to the other inmates, including painting an outhouse.”

In 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada narrowly rejected the appeal from Sue Rodriguez, a British Columbian suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The Victoria woman had challenged Canada’s prohibition against doctor-assisted suicide. Robinson, her ally and eventually her close friend in the battle, was with her when she decided to break the law by ending her life through doctor-assisted suicide. Unable to find a Canadian doctor to help the process, Robinson enlisted a foreign doctor who has never been identified. Robinson, who wasn’t charged, describes here in detail for the first time what happened that day inside Rodriguez’s Victoria home.

“I entered through the back yard and through the sliding glass door, which had been left open for me. Sue was alone in her bed downstairs. She was very calm and clear. I again asked her if she was certain that she wanted to go ahead that day, and told her there was absolutely no problem in putting it off. She was very firm and told me that she knew that this was the time.

“She said that her husband had taken her son away to a movie and lunch, but would call in the afternoon to make sure that everything was okay. She had decided upon the music that she wanted played at the time of her death, [German recording artist] Deuter, and I put the tape in the player and turned up the volume after she said it was too quiet.

She laughed at one point and said that I was more nervous than she was, and she calmed me. I was in tears and felt so helpless, but also so inspired by her great courage.

“After she received a lethal dose of secobarbital, she asked me to hold her as she listened to the music. I got into bed beside her and held her in my arms. At one point the doorbell rang, and I panicked and looked out the window, only to see two earnest Jehovah’s Witnesses at the door. Eventually they left, much to our relief.

“Sue slipped into unconsciousness, but it took a very long time for her heart to stop beating. I lay with her until that time. It was so painful, but I was also very glad that I was able to be with her at the end, as I had promised her. When I was certain that she was dead, I covered her head with a sheet and went upstairs to call her family doctor to ask him to come and pronounce her dead. As well, I called the local RCMP detachment and told them that Sue had died with the assistance of a physician, and that they should come to her home. I made a very brief statement and told them that I would be retaining legal counsel, and then called my friend and lawyer Clayton Ruby. They then let me leave the house, and I drove to the nearby town of Sidney where I spent the night at the Sidney Hotel. I did not sleep much that night.”

Some of Robinson’s critics felt his activism and generosity were driven by ego and self-promotion, but Truelove uncovered efforts to help others — including the son of his drug-addicted sister — that never became media headlines.

“Truthfully, I always had a better relationship with Svend than I had with my own mother,” Jason says. “Svend really cared about me. I can’t remember a birthday that he didn’t call or write.”

In December of 1997, while hiking alone on Galiano Island near where he and Max had a cabin, Robinson fell off an 18-metre cliff.

He tried to get up, but the first movement of his right leg brought even more agony. With effort, he turned to look at his leg. It was covered in blood, but it didn’t look as bad as it felt, and that was good. He hadn’t seen the bone protruding from his torn ankle yet. He turned to face forward again and saw the blood dripping from his face onto the rocks below. Too much blood. He seemed to have some pebbles or dirt in his mouth, so he tried to spit. He screamed in pain. They were bones inside his mouth — his jaw was shattered, and he would later learn he was missing eight teeth.

Robinson managed to crawl through the forest and found help. He was flown to the Vancouver General Hospital, had surgery, and had his jaw wired shut.

“Svend before the accident was difficult to work for. Svend after the accident was probably one of the most horrific times of our lives with him,” says (office assistant Jane) Pepper. Frustrated with the immobility and pain, he was more demanding than ever. His hospital bed became his office. His political judgment suddenly confused (said staffer and future MP) Bill Siksay. “Svend is a really hyperactive, really creative kind of guy. But Svend on drugs (after surgery) is really scary.”

In 2004 Robinson was in some ways at the height of his career, but his behaviour was increasingly erratic and Max was considering leaving him.

He wasn’t sleeping. He wasn’t eating. He was travelling almost non-stop. He and Max were constantly fighting; anything could trigger an argument. And some of the things he was doing were outlandish to the point of terrifying. On Galiano Island, Svend was fiddling with the outboard motor to their boat and accidentally dropped it into the ocean. Max happened to go down to the dock and found Svend tying one end of a rope around his neck and the other end to a heavy rock he held, about to jump into the ocean to retrieve the motor. Svend might sometimes have been foolhardy, but he wasn’t illogical. This was not Svend.

Max told him that enough was enough. He needed to leave politics and start taking care of himself. Svend ignored that advice, just as he had ignored the advice of his physician to see a psychiatrist after his hiking accident. The manic behaviour continued.

Robinson crashed in April of 2004, while returning from a visit to Kelowna to see sister Ingrid. He had been thinking of proposing to Max, and near the Vancouver airport he stopped at a jewelry auction, where he spotted a diamond ring the RCMP would later value at $21,500.

Momentarily unattended — except by the security cameras — Svend picked it up, put it in his pocket, looked up at the video camera and returned to his car. For a moment he just sat there. Then he realized he had left his cellphone on a seat in the auction house. He returned, sat down and watched for a few minutes as the auction continued. He returned to his car.

“And then I realized immediately, ‘My God, what is this madness?’ ”

He knew he had to return the ring, but in that parking lot he felt something he rarely ever felt: fear. Too afraid to face the embarrassment of going back inside, he drove home. He tried to contact the auction house, but it was too late to reach anyone there. The head office was in Toronto, three time zones away, and it was Good Friday, after all. Still in a manic state, he spent the long weekend working at a frenzied pace. He was, by now, in hell. Tortured by shame, he fully understood the possible consequences of what he’d done, but what he couldn’t understand was why he’d done it. His actions had gone against every principle he held dear. His identity was crumbling, and there seemed to be no explanation. As a teenager trapped in an abusive home, he had imagined what it would be like to kill himself. In the tormented days after the theft, he thought of suicide again. But he wasn’t a teen any more; he was a grown man, and one who had become used to taking responsibility for his actions.

Finally, on Monday morning, he got hold of the auction house and learned that the staff had already contacted the Richmond RCMP. Svend did the same and then spoke with Max.

A tearful Robinson suggested at a news conference that it related to emotional issues as well as potentially to the post-traumatic stress of his near-fatal 1997 hiking accident. Others suggested that Robinson, overcome with stress and anxious to leave politics, was deliberately sabotaging his career. His psychiatrist concluded he had a mental illness, specifically bipolar disorder. But Robinson, who (pled guilty) and was sentenced to probation and 100 hours of community service, remains baffled over what he did — and opened the door to a darker rationale while speaking to Truelove.

“Maybe, I mean, I saw this ring and thought that I could get away with it somehow. I don’t know, right? I mean, I don’t want to gild the lily in any way. Maybe there was just an element of bad in it, too. Maybe ... temptation overcame me. I don’t know.”

Interviewed by Truelove in his home near Geneva, Robinson said the theft could be viewed as a “good thing” for him.

“It forced me to confront the mental health challenges that I wasn’t confronting, that I was just denying. And had I not done that, the consequences could have been fatal. And I’m still standing ... It was horrendous. It was a nightmare. But it probably was also life-saving.”

Robinson didn’t run in the 2004 election but attempted a comeback in 2006 in Liberal stalwart Hedy Fry’s Vancouver Centre riding. He lost badly.

At first, Jack Layton encouraged his candidacy … a handful (of caucus colleagues) were supportive, but most weren’t. Even Libby Davies felt it was too soon. With the Liberals under fire for the sponsorship scandal, the No. 1 issue in the election was expected to be ethics. In that context, the candidacy of a man convicted of theft wouldn’t reflect well on the NDP. … A few of the conversations were unpleasant, particularly the one Robinson had with (former leader) Alexa McDonough, who initially, he recalls, hadn’t even wanted to take his call. Robinson remembers the call ending with McDonough saying he was medically unstable, while Robinson called her a disgrace. (It is worth noting that McDonough remembers their conversation quite differently. “I don’t remember that being much of an issue at all,” she says.)

Robinson, with Davies one of only two MPs to support Layton’s 2003 leadership bid, realized his leader didn’t want him to run either. So he flew to Toronto in hopes of changing his mind.

“It was terribly, terribly emotional and painful — just the two of us, sitting in his kitchen at his house on Huron Street in Toronto, and me arguing with him about why I thought I should run, and him equally strongly making the arguments about why I shouldn’t,” Robinson recalls. His friendship with Layton and Davies was unaffected, but at the time he felt hurt and betrayed.

Robinson’s legacy can’t be judged without considering the impact of his absence from the today’s NDP under Tom Mulcair.

In addressing the situation in the Middle East, Robinson had said what he believed to be true, regardless of how the social and political machinery in Canada might react. … According to Davies, that principled approach has been missing in the years since Robinson’s departure from politics. “Some people are concerned that we’ll slide, especially on foreign affairs. He was an outstanding voice on foreign affairs when he was critic for so many years. He never shied away from things,” she says. “People wanted it. They wanted a party that actually had a real, critical position on foreign affairs — that wasn’t the Time magazine version ... and that’s, I fear, what we’ve come around more to now.”

Comments

We encourage all readers to share their views on our articles and blog posts. We are committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion, so we ask you to avoid personal attacks, and please keep your comments relevant and respectful. If you encounter a comment that is abusive, click the "X" in the upper right corner of the comment box to report spam or abuse. We are using Facebook commenting. Visit our FAQ page for more information.

Almost Done!

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.

Postmedia wants to improve your reading experience as well as share the best deals and promotions from our advertisers with you. The information below will be used to optimize the content and make ads across the network more relevant to you. You can always change the information you share with us by editing your profile.

By clicking "Create Account", I hearby grant permission to Postmedia to use my account information to create my account.

I also accept and agree to be bound by Postmedia's Terms and Conditions with respect to my use of the Site and I have read and understand Postmedia's Privacy Statement. I consent to the collection, use, maintenance, and disclosure of my information in accordance with the Postmedia's Privacy Policy.